Jehanne Henry has been Human Rights Watch’s Sudan researcher since November 2007. Prior to joining the organization, she was a human rights officer with the United Nations Mission in Sudan based in North Darfur. In addition to her experience in Darfur, Henry has worked on human rights and rule of law issues with USAID in Cambodia, as a legal adviser with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, and as a legal aid project manager with the American Refugee Committee in Kosovo. She has also worked with the office of the prosecutor in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, and clerked for a US federal judge in New York. She holds a law degree from the University of Texas, a bachelor’s from Columbia University in New York, and is admitted to practice law in New York State. She is fluent in French and has working knowledge of Arabic and Spanish.

Henry was born in Egypt to academic parents and lived in a succession of academic towns in Europe, the Middle East and the United States, before studying philosophy at Columbia University. At law school in Austin, Texas, she helped defend death row inmates and asylum seekers. She subsequently spent six months in The Hague at the Office of the Prosecutor for the War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. She has worked with a number of international organisations on human rights, human rights training and rule of law projects – in Mexico, Ecuador, Kosovo, Cambodia, Morocco, Botswana, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, and South Sudan.

Henry, Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch spoke about the current situation in the two Sudans – where continuing war in Darfur and the north-south border zone and internal conflict in the new country of South Sudan have been accompanied by new constraints on rights in both countries.